A bomb attack on the inner core of the Syrian regime's circle is NOT possible. Its more likely Assad killed them to prevent them from jumping ship. Some days ago a relative of the defense minister (from a Sunni sect that supported the regime) just jumped ship. Assad's Alawites, his Lebanese Shia supporters and the power behind Assad (Iranian revolutionary guards) are going to use this excuse for a big Sunni cleansing in Syria.

Let's see who's shitting in his pants today? Worrying about his wifey-wife and his little kiddies … unlike his cold treatment of EVERYONE ELSE in Syria … it's Basher's turn to feel the fear!

A plague on his house … the end is nigh!

But what's up with the WMD's … Chemical & Biological Weapons? … they must not fall into the hands of the Islamist thugs … jihadis … someone is working overtime in Tel Aviv & Washington determining when to swoop in to secure them … there SHOULD NOT be a repeat of what happened in Libya vis a vis arms getting into the 'wrong' hands …

Like I predicted months ago … Assad will go down BUT NOT BEFORE 100,000 dead in his country … I feel like that woman in Revolutionary France/Paris … stitching while the guillotine keeps doing its job !!!!

Let them eat cake! The Syrian Nation is best off … divided among its constituent groupings … as I've said previously … Assad will try to make his last stand where the Alawis have their 'homeland' … that'll be the end of Syria as we've known it … good riddance …

Assad's regime has received loads of arms and fighters from Iran, Hizbula, Iraq,China and Russian veto and arms.However,what's more supportive of him is the west turning a blind eye to the pogroms,abduction and horrific torure to prisoners and even children.This is a great support to this tyrant.I used to believe that the West is the supporter of human rights,since I studied English culture,I both believed and respected the West but I no longer do.Their atitude to the ruthless,callous despot is shameful;they fiald humanity, Syrians, despite the hollow,occasional condemnatory statments.Bashar's father came to power through a military cuop and his brother said " we will never leave power unless by power, not even God is able to make us leave".So what sort of deplomacy will work with them,surely no.people took up arms when they felt that no one is beside them but the world is beside the dictator.Never before has there anyting like this; civilians being bombarded and no one is taking action to stop these crimes against humanity.

For the past almost year and a half crimes against humanity are executed in Syria pretty much on a daily basis.

With the Russian and Chinese veto power exercised, together with the Arab League, the OIC, and the West unwillingness / avoidance to interfere, the UN practically offers carte blanche for Assad to perform those crimes against humanity without an end in sight.

The main purpose of the UN establishment was to avoid such occurrences, and time and time again the UN fails it duties: It failed to protect Cambodians in the 1970's; It failed to protect Rwanda in the 1990's; it fails to protect Syrians in the 2010's; it fails to penalize an Iranian President that calls for a genocide against another UN member state.

The UN is a failure. It is a waste of time and money. It practically legitimizes aggressions instead of curbing them. Anyway the laws of the jungle are those being followed.

Only two and a half weeks ago FARS (Iran's semi-formal news agency) reported that a joint military exercise involving 90,000(!) soldiers from Russia, China, Iran, and Syria, is to be conducted ON SYRIAN SOIL. That report was denied at the time by both Syria and Russia.

Memo to those with furtive imaginations on this comment board: please stick to your Call of Duty play station games and leave the real world to the rest of us. According to every reliable foreign journalist that has courageously made it into Syria despite Assad's desire to continue his genocide away from world attention, foreign fighters (let alone those of the "Al Qaeda" persuasion) are less than 0.1% of those fighting, 99.9% are civilians whose families have been butchered and now have nothing to lose and defecting army conscripts who were asked to kill unarmed co-citizens. They are armed with rifles and they are up against a vicious, mostly uneducated alawite section of the army, the shabiha mercenaries who also have no respect for human life, aligned with Iranian republican guard mercenaries and Hezbollah terrorists, all with the latest Russian armaments and spy technologies. I dont know about you, but i know who I'd like to see winning, morally , and in geo-political terms!

Unfortunately Obama doesn't understand the difference between people and policies. The present situation offers splendid opportunities to press Assad to make Syria a more free country. But Obama is only interested in regime change and having Assad's scalp on his cupboard (next to Gaddafi's).

The past year we have heard many times that Syria is close to a turning point. It never happened as the authors of those ideas overlooked how many resources Syria's government has left. But admitting that would mean admitting that choosing for revolution is a much more violent choice than they previously stated.

"thugs", "genocide","lost" rights, etc. It sounds like the US propaganda. This is a low level civil war and civil wars are always nasty - on both sides. Condemning one side in such a situation is very cheap. You might better look at the outside forces that fuel the strife. They are the really evil guys.

A civil war is a conflict between to equal and opposing sides. Contrast to Syria, you have a small minority violently imposing its will upon the majority. This is not a civil war, it is ethnic cleansing. Thankfully, the tide is turning.

If only the "opposition" or "rebels" (what happened to plain old people's revolution or uprising?) were in a civil war. This is nothing of the sort. This is like Saddam Hussein when he massacred the people who tried to rise up against him in the marshlands, or the Kurds that were gassed by him, or the Chechens that were massacred in their tens of thousands by Putin, or the bosnians by milosevic, or the minorities by Stalin...need I go on ? If ONLY these poor people were receiving help from outside. This is the biggest lie of this uprising. The gulf monarchies talk a good game, as does Turkey, but they have provided diddly squat to these or people. And as for the US. The behaviour of the administration has been nothing less than cowardly. I don't normally share McCain's politics, but he is spot on. Obama and Clinton have been disgraceful. These Syrian people have zero political value to the west. Syria has no oil, and there is no political voting bloc that matters in the west, and Israel has been quite comfortable with Assad, as with most Arab dictators and religious extremists, as long as they get "stability". What they all fear is the true rise of democracy in these countries. Woe befall the western nations that will have proven to have sided with dictators once these brave people in the region truly discover and recover their rights in the face of butchering security services armed by East and West..

Did you have an opinion poll that you are so sure that the majority supports the uprising? Far being seen as an oppressor Assad was quite popular among all population groups before the trouble started.

What the rebels in Syria now are doing is having a classical guerrilla war and anyone who has studied such wars knows that they always get ugly. Yes, government soldiers who aren't trained for such a murderous adversary commit war crimes. But so do the rebels. And the rebels do it with the deliberate intention to provoke government crimes.

Why do you think the rebels stayed so long in Baba Amr? Not to protect the population: towards the end nearly all citizens had fled. They deliberately hid behind citizens as they wanted citizens to be killed and their houses to be destroyed. That is good as propaganda to get other Syrians to support them and to convince gullible foreigners.

The rebels are deceiving people in another way too: by suppressing dissent. In Damascus you can be a member of the opposition. If they find you too troublesome you may occasionally be arrested but compared to rebel-held territories that is freedom. As an Assad supporter in rebel held territory you are likely to be either killed or asked to leave the area.

"Low level" civil war in Syria? Where have you been? The Assad regime killing its own people by way of systematic torture, bombardment, use of military (helicopters, drones, tanks) against its own people is unparalleled in recent memory. There is nothing 'low level' about this conflict.
"US propaganda"? Check out You tube and twitter feeds from Syrians on the ground using cellphones to video govt soldiers shooting pedestrian women and children.
The 'evil guys' are Assad, his brother and regime seniors who's scorched earth policy of killing everyone in order to hold onto power.

"Did you have an opinion poll that you are so sure that the majority supports the uprising?"

First, the country's in the middle of a civil war. Nobody has recent polls about anything. You couldn't get a reliable poll about what percentage of Syrians like cake.

"In Damascus you can be a member of the opposition. If they find you too troublesome you may occasionally be arrested..."

...arrested, beaten, tortured in several horrifying ways, and then shot. Really, WR, you have to make it clear when you're abbreviating. Less perceptive readers might think you were writing that arresting you is the worst thing the regime will do to you.

I say outsiders are not doing anything to deserve "having a say" about what happens next. Either help these poor people or get out of the way and zip it. The only ones whose views matter are the Syrian people and the ones who matter most are the majority, and they have been kept down, oppressed, tortured and slaughtered by the Alawite mafia in control of Syria. Talk to the Lebanese, the Palestinians..they will tell you about the Assad family's crimes over the decades. If the Syrian mafia thugs had fought as hard for the Golan Heights in the 70s as they know how to do against Arab civilian populations, that territory would have been liberated by now! I am sick and tired of the Western Angry White Man syndrome that rears its ugly post-9/11 head on comment boards. If these poor people had been Jews or Christians, you'd all be up in arms. Assad is modern day Stalin. Shame on you all. These people fighting for liberty deserve our respect. If it takes them turning to religion to find the strength and support to remove this monster and his thugs from their midst, I say all power to them. This outrageous lie that Israel and its supporters have propagated about us being at war with the simple, peace and family loving Muslim peoples needs to be turned around. You all sound like monsters by constantly referring to rebels. Where we're your sanctimonious behinds when it was civilian protesters being mowed down, raped and tortured for that freedom and liberty you've all been criticizing the Arab world for ? Bunch of hypocrites with no heart. The FSA and the Syrian population are among the bravest I've ever seen in standing up to this monster. Shame on you for putting them.

Six more months to go, give or take.
.
Assad cannot stay, and after the massacres, either he has to go to the Hague, or he ends up like Benito Mussolini. But if he was the kind of guy who would surrender himself to the Hague, he would long ago have taken up many of the previous offers of foreign asylum for a comfortable retirement. So instead of folding, he is going to double down.
.
Faced with that choice, and given that removal of Assad would be a big defeat for the government of Iran, the only thing sure is that the violence is going to intensify. It is going to be a bloody six months.
.
Then the Syrians are going to have to figure out how to run their own country, for better or for worse.
.
Good luck to them.

According to the Bible, the grand plan of the Satan is being implemented by its greatest disciple, The various symbols of Luciferism like greed, hedonism, wars, arrogance, same sex liasons, gluttony, cult leaders etc. are now prevalent in these societies even in their established churches.

Don't forget that Iraqi Kurds sell their oil directly without the proceeds going through Iraq's central government coffers. Kurdistan's independence is a pretty much done deal, only needs the public announcement.

As per Libya - There are calls for a federal system, a step on the way to separation. All parts are oil-rich, so nothing really stands on the way of that happening..

Based on the interpretation the Biblical prophecy, the King of the West will finally battle it out with the Caliph of the South. However in this penultimate stage, the King of the West will combine with the forces of Caliph of the South to drive away the King of the North. This strategic move is necessary in order to eliminate their common foe, the King of the East. There is all pre-destined as they are all in the Satan's plan. But the Messiah will return to restore Peace to the Abrahamic World.

" I suspect the national Syrian forces is fighting well equipped foreign mercenaries in many areas, essentially making this an anti-invasion war."

Hmm. What else do you suspect? Quite a few people know for a fact that, the overwhelming majority of the fighters are Syrians - and they have the mourning families to support that. Families that have lived in that neck of the woods for centuries. So, that pretty much makes it a civil war, by definition, you know. Or maybe you don't...

Assad's regime will never step down. It just won't happen, him and his nut job friends will fight till the death. Small rebel groups will never oust him because his government has an airforce and they are going up against a fractured rebel group with no anti-aircraft capabilities. I think Assad proved he will bomb any city at will, if he needs to. Aside from that, he has a powerful ally in Russia that will re-supply him as he needs it, so long as he allows the Russians to keep their Naval base in the Med. Sea.

The "rebels" are idiots themselves. Instead of seeing the Kurds as valuable allies and using them to help their cause, they shun them out and treat them the same exact way that Assad treated them. What makes anyone here think that these "rebels" are a better alternative than Assad?

I am so sick and tired of all these people sitting around in big comfortable chairs talking about how we should do this and do that, and how we need to help the rebels. The truth is, none of us know sh*t about Syria or its people. None of us know what happens when you flood a nation with free weapons then take out the government and leave a huge power vaccume. None of us know what happens when you glorify a bunch of Islamic extremists as "Freedom Fighter."....oh wait didn't we do that in another middle eastern nation during the 80's and 90's?? How'd that turn out?

Assad "needs some dignity"? I don't know about that. If he had quit a year ago and went into exile then yes, we could afford him a modicum of dignity. But after the shit he's pulled? I say we ought to drag him off to the ICC.

Who exactly is we? How about "we" mind our own business? That business being the innocent civilian that we are killing in drone attacks in Afghanistan? How about we nice Westerners do that before we go and preach to Assad about human rights?

But we won't do that because we have interests that make these innocent civilian deaths an acceptable expediency. Yes, we have interests.

Assad also has interests and following the same logic he will continue to kill to protect those interests.

In any case picking sides amongst these savage populations is unwise. The new regime will be worse and more chaotic. Just look at Libya.

I am originally from Zimbabwe but would never support an armed revolt against Mugabe. Simply because Tsvangirai will be a splendid replacement for mad bob. The problems in these places are not as black and white as Westerners see them.

It seems to me as in the Bible prophecy that we are now entering into the final Phase of the Age of Lucifer to pave the way for the return of the Messiah. The Great Satan is creating havoc in the Middle East in order to annihilate the King of the East by driving out the King of the North.
SPEAKING FREELY
Regime change in Syria: A true story
A bizarre coalition of the United States, al-Qaeda and the Gulf Cooperation Council is supporting with arms and fighters a rebel force in Syria that doesn't represent the people. The unlikely allies - aided by a biased Western media - are pushing forward with regime change despite the regional chaos that will descend once Bashar al-Assad is finally overthrown.
- Francois-Alexandre Roy (Jul 5, '1

Can't help thinking Putin and his assorted cronies are going to be feeling very stupid in a year or so when Assad is dead and the victorious rebels show their thanks for Russia's tireless (and tiresome) support for the former despot.

Most of the fighters are actually not rebels but al Qaeda invaders from foreign Ummahs like Libya, Eygpt, Turkey etc. with funding and arming by the Wahabbi and the West. In fact, it could be a life and death struggle between ordinary folks and terrorists imported from abroad.

" Who would prevent them from taking revenge for those killed during the uprising?"
Which one? They have not yet sated their thirst for blood and revenge for what had happened in February 1982, in Hama. They, the rebels, will have to exact revenge at first for that event; then they will exact revenge for the recent events. Oh, those peace-loving characters in that part of the world have been going at it for quite a while now. But, of course, others are to be blamed for all that, yes, we know...

Are saying the regime should keep the killing on only because it is scared?The killing will go on anyway,but let us not give excuses or explanations for what the regime had and is doing up to now.Carving up this country between sects and tribes could be an exit.

Hilary Clinton is not proposing Islamic radicals replace Assad. She never said that.

Where is support for your proposition that the opposition is mostly Islamic radicals? Yes, some may have joined the fight but BBC and Guardian reports state that many ordinary Syrians have also joined the fight from all walks of life. Teachers, taxi drivers, etc.

You are indeed correct when you write: "You do not understand Hilary's stance . . ." You understand very little of this conflict.

Why would you considere all the Sunnis in Syria are bunch of Islamic radicals.Is he the only liberal and open minded let us say in Syria?I think generalising in talking is bad ,plus if i have to believe that all Sunnis in syria are like this ,where is the Sunni elite?Well simple to guess,the elite is ,thanks to the Assad family,either killed or fled the country.So after you humiliate a whole people ,you will be faced one day by the masses,and this is what happen,killing everywhere.

Kurds truly deserve a break. In Iraq Sadam was using chemical gas to annihilate them, In syria they were being denied citizenship, in turkey their very existence has been denied and in iran, well Iran only hangs them from cranes.

A free kurdistan should be allowed to exist. Kurds need a place to call home. 40 million people don't have a country. They are continuously being persecuted and discrimated against in every country that they live in.

Come people; good people of the world; the kurdish issue (as they call it in tureky) is an issue of humanity. Let's kurds a homeland. Now is the perfect opportunity to start the process of uniting the four parts. And the Middle East will be better for it. It won't be as 'combustible' as it is now. If we try to understand the reasons why it is as it is and maybe then we could look at what we to be done bring peace to the region. Letting kurds have a homeland will be an important step of starting to make middle east peaceful

I see an independent country for the Kurd people in 20-25 years. By then Turkey will be the most important foe of the US (you are naive if you think an islamic Turkey can be a natural friend of the US), forcing the Americans to support a free Kurdistan (in order to weak Turkey).